superhippy420 said:
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So they're somehow gonna tap into the market constant with the usual suspects despite the console having an immense lack of appeal and planning and no casual audience to fall back on? A handful of games that sell great does not equal software breadth. You claim that 3DS vs Vita situation taught you so much and you say that one can't use holiday sales as an indicator for how well a console does the rest of the year (which is something I agree with, of course). I just wonder; do you know what is causing the Vita to fail? Do you want me to tell you? Have you seen all the people who are raving about the Wii U's rise in weekly sales in the holiday season, citing this as a sign that it is making a comeback? No small amount of people did already. Do you understand what the casual audience are up to and what Nintendo attempted do accomplish with the Gamepad?
You say you're a business major but you don't seem to understand the basics of appeal, markets and demographics, which strikes me as very odd. One can assume that there will be a yoy rise next year, a fairly good one even but one has to question the future of a console that managed a global baseline of under 30k per week for a several weeks and an actual decrease in weekly numbers in Japan following a price cut and Zelda Windwaker HD. People see the huge rise only, "wow, from 3k to almost 50k!!!" Impressive. You know what's not impressive? Managing to sink to 3k to begin with in your first full year on the market and managing to still only hover below the 50k mark in the beginning of December, all this facing competition that is either 7-8 years old or non-existant. With the holiday sales being as incredibly poor as they are and the console likely being overtracked in both NA and Europe, can you really see a good Q1 and Q2 next year and do honestly believe that, like I mentioned, the usual suspects will somehow make the Wii U relevant all of the sudden?
NES: Market constant (forced) and broad appeal, good sales
SNES: Market constant, decent competition and good appeal, decent sales
N64: No market constant (near complete loss of 3rd parties in the PS transition), niche appeal and heavy competition, poor sales
Gamecube: No market constant, massive competition and niche appeal, very poor sales
Wii: Partial market constant (in the casual sphere), good competition, incredible casual appeal, very good sales but a highly irregular sales curve (straight up and straight down)
Wii U: No market constant, niche appeal, potentially big competition, sales...? You finish it if you want but I think you see where this is going.
If you still believe in some massive comeback in the near future, I can only assume that you're not actually attending school, or at the very least that you're fond of sleeping in class. It will rise, there's no possible way it could do down, but it won't matter, even a 100% yoy increase would lead to meager sales at this stage. One has to assume that either both the One and the PS4 will have to fall hard on their asses (as in below 30 million lifetime on their asses) or the Wii U will need an unprecedented 200 or even a 300% yoy increase to become relevant (depending on year end numbers, at this stage it's looking like a 300% increase in 2014 would net about 12 million sales for the cy, perhaps less).
So which is it? Will the other two fail or will the Wii U suddenly rise due to the same franchises they employed since 1983? Stylizing the problem into; more games equals good sales by default shows a complete lack of understanding of most things concerning sales and markets. How did the PS3 manage almost 8 million in its first full year on the market with a ludicrous price tag, decent competition and a staggered launch? Games? Yeah, "Lair" and other greats were paramount to these numbers. I'm awfully sorry, but no amount of Mario or Zelda or even price cuts can salvage this operation at this point; the Wii U has no base appeal and that is its biggest problem by far. You could put a huge pot of gold in a house that no one wanted, that had a horrible location and crooked walls and floors and that no one knew existed, it wouldn't matter, no one would claim that gold. Adding sports rims and air-condition and leather seats to a Toyota Yaris won't suddenly make it appeal to customers who never even considered it at all before, driving around in more comfortable, spacious and advanced cars.
